Not very long ago, a bit of audio tape emerged in which Marcus Bachmann, husband of Presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann, likened gays and lesbians (and, one presumes, the entire LGBTQ community) to “barbarians”:

We have to understand: barbarians need to be educated. They need to be disciplined. Just because someone feels it or thinks it, doesn’t mean that we are supposed to go down that road. That’s what is called the sinful nature.

I have no idea how quantitatively true it is that gay men sound “gay,” as a rule. Like most people like me, I have what I think of as gaydar, and it is of course set off by men who evidence such things as a lisp, a predilection for pastels, or a greater-than-average interest in musical theater.

For all I know, these things are, in fact, a genetic component of “being gay,” and like any other genetic thing, they run in greater and lesser degrees through the blood of a majority of gay men — just as having a certain physical build is often identifiable as Scandinavian, or a tendency to bald young is associated with Jewish men. Whatevs. I don’t actually care, in any real, meaningful sense. If the LGBTQ community wants to make jokes about the stereotype — or even about Marcus Bachmann — more power to them. We all get to joke about our own. It’s part of how we maintain sanity/autonomy.

However, when society at large starts to giggle at a man’s lisp, or limp-wristed dance moves, even if it’s in an effort to point out possible hypocrisy — even if it’s in an effort to point out pernicious, dangerous hypocrisy in a politically powerful figure — we are not helping to solve the problem. We are, in fact, perpetuating it.

If Bachmann’s slight lisp is funny — why isn’t it funny when some other man lisps? If Bachmann’s failure to maintain stereotypical manly mannerisms is funny — why isn’t it funny when boys play with Barbies or men arrange flowers? When we laugh at these things in Bachmann, we’re saying, loud and clear, that they are laughable. (We’re also, by the way, saying that they can only mean one thing: gay. Not bi-. Not non-normative. Not straight-guy-with-a-lisp. No — these mannerisms mean one thing and one thing only. And we decide what that is). If I were a gay man who had been beaten up for my “girly” behavior — would I be enjoying the jokes made by straight people at Bachmann’s expense? Maybe. Maybe it would feel like payback. But maybe it would also re-confirm what the bullies had been screaming at me all along. (We’ll leave aside, for the moment, the misogyny inherent to finding feminine behavior laughable. But trust, dear reader: There’s misogyny here, too).

So are Bachmann’s mannerisms indication that he’s gay? Hell if I know. And I’m not going to join in on the comedy.

But there is one thing that suggests to me, very powerfully, that Bachmann is, in fact, a closeted member of the LGBTQ community: the very virulence of his hatred (and that of his wife) for the community.

Time and time again, we have seen anti-gay crusaders revealed to have active same-sex sex lives. Whether they are gay, bi-, or something else all together doesn’t really matter — what matters is that they spend their on-camera time demonizing human beings who have same-sex sex, and their off-camera time having same-sex sex. The hypocrisy is horrible, but when coupled with the very real danger that these people pose to the lives of actual human beings the hypocrisy moves from “horrible” to “loathsome and unforgiveable.”

Ted Haggard, former head of the National Association of Evangelicals; Larry Craig, former Republican senator; Bob Allen, former Republican state senator (Florida); Glenn Murphy, Jr., former president of the Young Republican National Federation; George Rekers, psychologist and founding member of the Family Research Council; Eddie Long, influential Atlanta pastor; James McGreevy, former Democratic governor of New Jersey; Roy Ashburn, former Republican state senator (California); Richard Curtius, former Republican state senator (Washington) — the list, frankly, goes on and on. All of these men actively engaged in ruining the lives of their fellow American citizens, all while quietly engaging in the very activity they declared reprehensible.

But the bitter contempt that he and his wife express toward people who have the temerity to not lead heteronormative lives (not to mention, frankly, the close knowledge of the need for “education” and “discipline”) sounds very, very familiar — and it carries the stench of hypocrisy.

The kind of hypocrisy that shatters lives — not least, and not incidentally, the lives of those peddling the lies in order to cover their own shame.

Marcus Bachmann’s sexual orientation is inherently irrelevant. What is relevant is that he and his wife are avowed homophobes, who cloak their homophobia in religious and pseudo-intellectual claptrap, as if to sound like fine, upstanding members of the human race. They are the worst kind of bigots, those that are unrepentant in the face of a society that shows every year that it has more tolerance for those things they declare abhorrent.

To take issue or make an issue of his sexual orientation, or to bicker about what various people mean when the call him “gay” or use some thinly-veiled and possibly offensive euphemism to enforce their view, is to play right into the hands of such a sycophant as he. Christian conservatives delight in setting their opponents upon each other, while they stand aside, wave a hand, and tell their adherents: “See? I was right!” We do their business for them, so they need not get their hands dirty, and puncture their view that they are in the “service of God.”

All I know is this: Michele Bachmann is an ignorant and hyperbolic person, who has no business being given access to the power granted her by the people of Minnesota. Under no circumstances should she bye given more power, by the citizenry of the United States. She has no business in politics, no business representing her state or her country, and I rue the wasting of any vote for her, when there are people better-suited for positions in Federal government. I hope after this election, that she fades into inconsequentiality.

I got into this dispute with some of the other Horders yesterday after (shameless plug) posting my own contribution to the ‘fabulous Marcus Bachmann’ comedy niche, and so I’m not going to belabor the point too much, but:

You are dead on in noting that “there is one thing that suggests to me, very powerfully, that Bachmann is, in fact, a closeted member of the LGBTQ community: the very virulence of his hatred (and that of his wife) for the community.” It’ is this virulence, juxtaposed with his broadly gay-seeming mannerisms, from which the humor springs. Marcus Bachmann’s lisp and exuberance would pass with relatively little comment and ridicule if he wasn’t part of a group of people (vehement homophobes) that has a history of being secretly gay in spite of their public stance.

Alex

“We have to understand: barbarians need to be educated. They need to be disciplined. Just because someone feels it or thinks it, doesn’t mean that we are supposed to go down that road. That’s what is called the sinful nature.”

I don’t think any of this reflects “virulent hatred” as you claim. “Let’s break out Uzi’s and blow the queers away!” reflects virulent hatred. Mr. & Mrs. Bachmann are shamed for holding fast to their morals and all the name-calling and implication that Mr. Bachmann might be struggling with his own homosexuality (a common snipe by homosexuals towards straight people who don’t embrace the ‘queer’ lifestyle) will not make them cave.